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  It won’t be too hard to guess that Pakistan is not on target to meet the Millennium Development Goals, aimed to be reached by 2015. The World Bank’s recent Global Monitoring Report 2011 reiterates this view, though with a more optimistic stance than any average Pakistani might hold. MDG goals focus on enhancing access to education, reducing gender disparity in education, eradicating poverty, improving maternal health and improving water and sanitation facilities. Compared to its South Asian peers, – India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh – Pakistan is on target for only a few of the goals, while the others have managed to be on the road to achieving more targets than Pakistan. The star of the quad is Sri Lanka, which is on target for most of the goals. Interestingly one of the very few goals that Pakistan is on target to meet, is poverty reduction. In this aspect the country has beaten regional ...

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With the government counting on sovereign bond market and local commercial banks eyeing lucrative investment avenues, the second Treasury-bill auction of the fourth quarter was fairly well covered and successful. The amount of bids placed outstripped the auction target amount by 1.6 times. The government also accepted bids close to Rs233 billion, over and above the asked amount of Rs225 billion. The benchmark paper alone accounted for nearly three-fourth of the total participation level in the auction. On the other hand, tenders for the 3-month and 12-month papers amounted to Rs44 billion and Rs50 billion, respectively. In line with fundamentals and market-based forecasts, the poor participation level in 3-month paper is pointing to stable interest rate in the next few months. Market sentiments improved on account of slight respite in inflation, stability in rupee and improvement in overall balance of payment. Since a long term interest rate outlook is dicey at the moment, the ...

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  Recently, the central bank allowed importers to cover forward booking of imports after keeping a lid on it for almost three years. The forward cover for importers was suspended in July 2008, when foreign reserves had sharply fallen to 3 months of imports amid sharp correction in the value of the rupee. Although, the allowance at that time was only against the opening of Letter-of-Credit (LCs) with no chance of speculative buying, virtually every importer was busy in buying dollars in advance against respective future payments. The regulator had to do something to give a breather to the market. However, the move could not stop the rupee’s slide and the import cover was further reduced to its lowest level of 2 months by the time the IMF came to the rescue. Now with positive external price shocks amid consistent growth in remittances through legal channels, the import cover has increased to 5.5 months ...